An extraordinary collector of modernist chairs

For years, Jeanne Rymer taught aspiring designers to create livable interiors, spaces that encourage visitors to “sit a spell.”

Eventually, that appreciation for seating prompted Rymer to do what decorators are trained to avoid – transform her home into a museum, in this case one devoted entirely to modernist chairs.

In the beginning, chairs designed by such masters as Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe resided in the main living space in Rymer’s angular, contemporary house in Wilmington, Del. But as her collection grew, she found herself in the awkward position of having too much of a good thing.

“If I couldn’t find a place to put it in the house, I couldn’t buy another chair,” she recalled. “And that didn’t make me happy.”

Retired from her 15-year tenure as head of University of Delaware’s Interior Design department, Rymer was blessed with the time to seriously study modernist furniture – and the space to share her collection with others. She and life partner, Ivor Stakgold, turned the lower level of their home – previously the sitting room in a spacious guest suite – into the Rymer-Stakgold Museum, a private furniture museum open by appointment and free of charge.

Her discerning eye and savvy as a collector were validated when Rymer sought a larger audience for her chairs. Earlier this year, the prestigious Philadelphia Museum of Art selected 35 of her chairs for its modernist section. The remaining 65 chairs are off to a new home at the Creative Arts Center at West Virginia University, her alma mater.

“Having my chairs go to such great places makes me feel validated as a collector,” she said. “It’s quite exciting to learn that the things you love are truly at the top of the heap.”

Rymer’s museum featured a rotating array of thought-provoking pieces, most amazingly comfortable despite their visually challenging angles. Witness the Plan-O-Spider patio chair, circa 1958. A French creation, the three-legged folding chair is made from a metal frame painted black; elasticized webbing in screaming scarlet forms the seat.

She remembers her excitement at finding a pair of leather “T” chairs, produced in 1952 by Laverne Originals. "I yearned for those chairs, just slavered over them," she said. “I felt a sense of absolute joy when I brought them home.”

Purchased for less than $1,000, the chairs proved a good investment. In a December 2006 sale at LiveAuctioneers.com, the Munich firm Von Zezschwitz Kunst und Design sold a single model T for 2,300 Euros ($3,600).

Rymer began collecting modernist pieces nearly 20 years ago, attracted by designs based on engineering and architecture, as well as relatively modest prices. While the designs remain intriguing, the prices are rising. Five years ago, she paid $1,500 at auction for a circa-1927 chair with rubber “hockey puck” feet designed by Warren McArthur, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. Two years later, the same model went on the block, but that particular chair was in poor condition.

“A great design, but really beat up,” she recalled. “The canvas upholstery was filthy and the rubber feet were disintegrating – and it still went for $3,500.”
In less than 15 years, Rymer collected 100 chairs. The most expensive was a $3,000 upholstered executive office chair with a five-footed metal pedestal base. Designed by Ettore Sottsass, founder of the Memphis Group, the chair was manufactured by Olivetti in Milan in 1966.

“People ask me why I didn’t sell my chairs because my collection has grown so much in value,” she said. “The point all along was to share wonderful designs with others -- and by donating my chairs more people than ever can enjoy them.”

Verner Panton’s cone chair, which resembles a futuristic ice cream cone, was designed in 1958 for a restaurant in Denmark. The Barcelona chair – sleek in black leather tufted with buttons -- has been called the most beautiful chair in the world.
“It certainly isn’t the most comfortable,” Rymer said. “It’s too low and too hard to get out of.”

Marvels of structure and function, most modern chairs were designed by architects, such as Le Corbusier. “They have the drawing skills and they know what their interiors require,” she noted.

The movement began in the mid-19th century, when a group of furniture designers made a conscious effort to create pieces not based on past or present styles. These furnishings would be made using machines and techniques that were rapidly being invented – and they would be crafted not from traditional woods but from new materials.

A one-time antique dealer, Rymer’s interest in modernist pieces was awakened when she taught classes on the history of furniture. She was captivated by the clean lines and philosophy of function as art.

She also found a pragmatic reason to collect newer pieces, as well.
“Fine antiques are prohibitively expensive,” she said. “But there are still opportunities for collectors of modernist furniture, although it would be almost impossible today to find chairs as reasonably priced as I did.”

Rymer found one of her first pieces, a Fledermaus cabaret chair designed by Josef Hoffmann, on a trip to Finland. She carried it home on the plane “back in the day when you could still drag stuff on board with you.” In her museum, she placed a Hoffmann chair produced in the 1960s next to one made in Austria around 1907, its cushioning visible through tattered fabric. “It’s interesting to look at the innards of a chair, the horsehair and little bits,” she mused.

Eames chairs molded from polyester resin enforced with glass fibers have become part of mainstream America. But instead of the familiar legs of metal tubes, the 1953 model in Rymer’s museum has legs of constructed from a network of black rods known as the Eiffel Tower.

“The chairs with the straight legs are in school cafeterias and waiting rooms, everywhere you could imagine, but the ones with the Eiffel Tower legs are special,” she said. “Your eye becomes alert to details like that pretty quickly.”

Rymer educated herself on conditions and pricing by immersing herself in auction catalogs and resulting prices. In recent years, she has gravitated toward sales of modernist furniture presented twice a year by John Sollo and David Rago at Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville, N.J.

Her favorite lot at the Oct. 27-28 event is a graceful gazelle chair by Dan Johnson with a verdigris bronze frame and caned seat and back. That chair is expected to fetch $3,000-$5,000 despite considerable wear to the seat.

“After all my years of collecting, I see a chair like that and still get excited,” Rymer said. “Great design has that effect on people.”